Fantastic day in Noosa! One of the best days in a while – and there have been some great days! After breakfast we headed to Eumundi, a quaint old fashioned town about 30 minutes inland from Noosa. On a Saturday and a Wednesday, it hosts several markets. The Original Market which is still there, stretches out over several acres and is a warren of stalls filled with goods from Queensland. Food, art, pottery, clothing, jewellery…. All artisan quality ware. There are other markets now, satellite markets which have grown up around this one, almost merging with it, and they have more normal “market” ware, much of which no doubt originates in India or China. But, captivating none the less.
We started off in the Original Market and spent over two hours in there. Oh…. If only I could have shipped half of it to our Cyprus house. Such amazing craft ware. We particularly liked the carved wooden tables that had hatched deep buckets in the centre for you to fill with ice and stash your beer or wine bottles. Genius idea! Lots of other things. Some very clever planks of wood with hook shapes cut out of them to hang plant pots. I must admit (shamefully) I photographed them in the hope Bob can make some. We have been admiring Australian chopping boards in a few places now. Superb hunks of wood, just too heavy to bring home. At the market they had some huge ones, shaped and with holes cut in to take small bowls for crudities and accompaniments to hors d’oevres. Would have loved one of those.
As it was I bought 3 sun dresses in lovely cotton, a perfumed oil container made from a kind of pine cone, some jewellery, …. Oh a few Xmas presents….. I could have bought loads of things….
We got back to the apartment by about 1230 and grabbed some lunch and then went down to the beach. It was a lovely afternoon. Plenty of sun, and hot without being the blinding heat we’ve had a few weeks ago. We didn’t take the tent and we didn’t need it. Judge from that. It was about 27C. Enjoyed playing in the waves interspersed with reading and dozing on our rolled mats.
About 3pm we noticed a vast crowd gathering at one end of the beach so I wandered over to see what was going on. There were a number of large marquees on the beach, tv cameras and several thousand people! It was the Noosa Surfing Festival’s first day. Before the serious stuff started they had a few novelty events. I watched the Tandem round in which people surfed with other people standing on their shoulders or both doing headstands… amazing….. The best though was Surf Dog, where it was a surfer with a dog riding the waves in!!!! The dogs ranged from giant hounds to jack russells. The small dogs tended to be riding between the surfer’s legs. The giant hounds rode on the front of the board, just sitting there, staring forward…. Very funny to watch! It was clearly quite a big deal. Apparently the largest surfing contest in the world measured by numbers of contestants. So, that was exciting…
Tonight we went out for dinner in an area of town called Noosaville. It is back from the main beach, up the river. Even more upmarket than Noosa itself. We had booked into a restaurant called Maisie’s which has been there since the 1920s and specialised in seafood. I had an amazing cold seafood platter and Bob had a hot fisherman’s basket. Mine had raw oysters, mussels, baby octopus salad, king prawns, Moreton Bay bug and a swimmer crab, salad and dips. Bobs had oysters mornay, king prawns, fish fillets, scallops, chips and salad. Everything was perfect. In particular the swimmer crab and the oysters mornay were superb. It was a byob place so we took along a bottle of white wine and they had an ice bucket for us. No cover charge! What a lovely evening.
So, the perfect Noosa day: shopping at the boho markets, swimming and enjoying the beach, surfing, seafood dinner with wine…..
This is a lovely, lovely place!